Venturing into the CountrysideIf you try to imagine what life was like for a woman in the early 19th

Venturing into the CountrysideIf you try to imagine what life was like for a woman in the early 19th century, Jane Austen’s world of complex yet delightful social relationships may come to mind. But in her work there are only hints of the major artistic movement that was at its peak in that moment in Britain. Romanticism had entered the world by the late 18th century and had been influenced by the individualistic ideals of the French Revolution; its followers regarded nature as sacred in a rapidly industrialized world and placed its interest in the past, especially the medieval period. These themes may not have much to do with Austen at first glance, but we can certainly appreciate a dynamic between her enlightened 18th century mind and the Romantic emotion in her work. The concept of wild, untamed nature and the sublime is key to understanding the Romantics’ view of how humans should experience the world. They rejected the 18th century idea that human reason should be used to tame and perfect nature. Instead, the greatness radiating from astonishing landscapes kept intact would be taken as an endless source of inspiration. What are men to rocks and mountains? Oh! what hours of transport we shall spend! And when we do return, it shall not be like other travelers, without being able to give one accurate idea of any thing. We will know where we have gone—we will recollect what we have seen. Lakes, mountains, and rivers shall not be jumbled together in our imaginations; nor, when we attempt to describe any particular scene, will we begin quarrelling about its relative situation. Let our first effusions be less insupportable than those of the generality of travelers. These words spoken by Elizabeth Bennett in Pride and Prejudice not only depict the heroine deeply enjoying the kind of landscape we have mentioned (she is referring to the Lake District, home to such poets as Wordsworth and Coleridge, who featured this area’s beauty, untouched beyond imagination, in their work) but also her desire to make her experience purely individual—another central idea of Romanticism. Read Full Article here: Venturing into the Countryside – Enchanted Living Magazine https://bit.ly/3504COT -- source link
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